


Detour

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [101]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, MSR, Mentions of Cancer, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 22:32:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5266268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	Detour

_“Joy to the world. All the boys and girls. Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me.”_

She fell silent again, and he thankfully didn’t ask her to keep singing. She shook her head, thinking of the few rare occasions Missy had tried in vain to cajole her into coming along to karaoke night, when they were both home from college. _Music is medicine for the soul_ , Missy would say, and Dana would laugh and roll her eyes and say that if that were true, then her own singing voice would only counteract any perceived medical benefit.

Long moments passed, and she listened carefully to Mulder’s breathing, still wishing she’d managed to get a fire going. His condition was not as stable as she would have liked, but he would survive the night, and in the morning they would be able to find their way out of the woods and get him to a hospital.

Probably.

He twitched, just a standard hypnogogic jerk, and she rubbed his back to resettle him without really thinking about it. He gave a groaning sort of murmur and sighed as he relaxed again across her lap. It couldn’t be comfortable, trying to sleep like that, but they didn’t exactly have a lot of options. Short of it actually raining sleeping bags… 

She didn’t need to delve too deeply into what had sparked that little exchange. Her battle with cancer had reminded her, no great surprise, that life is precious and fleeting. It could be taken from you in an instant, with no rhyme or reason, and when you lie there, staring into the abyss, you regret the chances not taken for the sake of mere propriety. The times you refrained from flirting with your partner, from flirting _back_ , just because it was the right and proper thing to do. It was harmless, but you held off purely for the sake of arbitrary codes of conduct, and that was ultimately stupid. Sure, you could fool yourself that there was more to it -- preservation of friendship, not irrevocably screwing up a good working relationship -- but when your time was up, or at least when you thought it was, you realized that the friendship, the working relationship, would have been more than strong enough to survive a little harmless flirting.

So she was trying to stop overthinking things so much, allowing herself to “just go with it,” to quote her partner, albeit somewhat out of context.

Mulder stirred again and mumbled something she couldn’t make out, and she wasn’t sure if he was talking in his sleep or actually trying to tell her something. She leaned over to put her face closer to his, listening.

“They’re not the same.”

She frowned. “What’s not?”

He shifted, blinking up at her. “Moth men. You might think they’re the same as the Jersey Devil, and the circumstances are similar, but they’re not the same.”

“You mean aside from the fact that this is Florida, not New Jersey?”

He chuckled, which spurred a bout of coughing, and Scully watched him, concerned, until he settled. 

“Aside from that, yeah.”

“I have to admit, the thought did cross my mind. I mean, primitive man-beast lurking in the woods, undetected for decades or even centuries, only striking out when threatened by development. It all feels more than a little bit familiar.”

“More than one path to the same end result.” His eyelids drooped again, and the end of his sentence slurred together somewhat.

Scully ran her fingers through his hair once, twice, then brought her hand back to rest on his shoulder. “Well, you can tell me about it in the morning. Get some rest if you can.”

He shivered. “‘m cold.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She frowned, thinking, then shifted to sit up and pull off her jacket. “Here.”

She draped it over him like a blanket, and he made a noise of protest.

“No, you need that.”

“Not as much as you do. I’ll be okay for now, and if I get too cold later, I’ll take it back. But you’ll fall asleep more easily if you’re warmer.”

She tucked the edges of the jacket under him as carefully as she could, and after a few minutes, his shivering subsided. His breathing gradually grew deeper and more even, until she was reasonably certain that he had finally fallen asleep. Moving slowly, incrementally, so as not to wake him, she tried to settle herself a little more comfortably -- inasmuch as that was even possible -- against the log behind her. 

The chorus of nighttime insects kept her from feeling too unnerved; whatever had kept the animals away or quiet during the day did not seem to have the same effect on the bugs. For several hours, she had no trouble staying awake and alert, dividing her attention between monitoring Mulder’s condition and monitoring their surroundings. Sometime after midnight, the temperature dropped, not so low that she would have minded if she were up and walking around, but sitting still on the cold ground, even with Mulder’s warmth across her lap, she began to shiver, just a little. She fought it for a few minutes before conceding defeat and reclaiming her jacket. She settled it around her shoulders with a sigh; the inside was warm from having trapped Mulder’s body heat.

With the renewed comfort, though, came drowsiness, and in an effort to keep herself awake and focused, Scully tried to separate and identify each of the individual sounds making up the nocturnal cacophony around them -- the crickets, cicadas, and katydids, something clicking or tapping, all with the gentle rustling of leaves high overhead, dancing in the occasional breeze. One lone frog, barely audible, croaked from what must have been a mile or more away. She was so focused, so acutely aware of every little sound, that she jumped when her stomach growled loudly.

Mulder stirred, and Scully held her breath until he let out a sigh and settled back to sleep. Laughing at herself, for being startled by her own stomach, she shook her head and then slowly stretched her back, tilting her chin up to look at the sky. Only a few hours to dawn, she guessed; once it started getting light again, she would see about venturing around their makeshift campsite just a little in search of something to eat.


End file.
